FACTBOX- Gulf, Midwest refineries eyeing busy maintenance season

January 14, 2013|Reuters

NEW YORK, Jan 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast refiners are likelyto undertake more maintenance this year after forgoing such work, orturnarounds, in 2012 to benefit from lucrative margins. Refiners like Valero, Marathon Petroleum and HollyFrontier have already taken units offline this month well before the Springmaintenance season is set to kick off. The heated maintenance season will last through the second quarter of theyear and could keep Midwest crude oil inventory levels high despite the recentstart of the expanded 400,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Seaway pipeline and othermidstream projects that will soon begin shipping inland crude to Gulf, East andWest Coasts markets. The Seaway line began pumping crude from the Cushing, Oklahoma, oil storagehub to Texas last week, instantly affecting global oil trade. U.S. West TexasIntermediate (WTI), which traded at a $26 a barrel discount against EuropeanBrent in mid-November last year, narrowed the spread to $17 a barrel afterSeaway started operations. Still, the turnaround season may not dent the glut of gasoline and dieselcurrently in store in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions. Gulf gasoline stockswere at a record high in the first week of the year, according to weeklygovernment data. The following are maintenance schedules made public by refiners over thelast year.